Chapter 86. Opening a Factory

     “It was several employees of the factory who swapped out the limited edition postcards and sold them to people outside at a high price.”

     Zheng Xuan, who was still out of town, called Li Yaolin to report the results of her investigation.

     She thought no one would be willing to do this for these 100 limited edition postcards, but as she investigated further, she found that there really were people who would do this!

      If it were just ordinary limited edition postcards, no one would care if a few were damaged. Coincidentally, the employees of this factory also thought so, thinking that it was just a few postcards, and no one would know if they were swapped out. Besides, a postcard that costs one or two yuan can be sold for 300 yuan. If he sells it himself, selling more than a dozen will be enough for this month’s salary!

     It happened that the second batch of postcards was produced before the New Year, and he urgently needed money to go home for the New Year, so when a relative who claimed to be doing purchasing on behalf of others found him to cooperate, he agreed to it out of greed.

     The second batch of postcards contains a total of one hundred limited editions. When they are delivered, they will be packaged into one hundred blind boxes respectively, and then mixed with other already packaged blind boxes and sent back to Xingzhou Island.

     He tampered with half of the blind boxes and replaced them with other blind boxes when loading the goods. Under normal circumstances, Xingzhou Island requires the production of 6,000 blind boxes, and the factory will produce more in case of emergency.

     It was just a few dozen blind boxes, and the factory would not care. Besides, Xingzhou Island would soon need them to rush to print 300,000 postcards, so the factory would not care about the surplus of the second batch of postcards.

     It was precisely by taking advantage of the factory’s omission that the employee successfully replaced half of the limited edition postcards and sold them to the purchasing agent.

     This factory is a small factory, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a small workshop. Zheng Xuan chose them because she had worked with them before and felt that their products were finely made and not rough, and they were willing to give a very cost-effective price when the order volume was not large.

     I didn’t expect that it was fine when taking small orders, but once I took large orders, the loopholes in management were exposed.

     “It was only after we called the police that the worker found out that his relative who was doing purchasing on behalf of others sold blind boxes for 800 yuan each! Now he has lost his job and is suspected of committing theft and has lost money in the process.”

     If it is just an ordinary blind box, its value is only 30 yuan each, but the blind box sold by the factory employee contains limited edition postcards. Judging from the fact that the purchasing agent sold it for more than 800 yuan and people rushed to buy it, its value is far more than 30 yuan, so he stole and made a profit of tens of thousands of yuan, and the crime is only big and not small.

     Li Yaolin said proudly: “My postcards are not expensive at 10,000 yuan each.”

     Zheng Xuan: “…Is this the point?”

     “Go on.”

     Zheng Xuan sorted out her thoughts and said: “After this incident, although the boss of this factory has been apologizing, trying to get forgiveness and make some compensation, I want to hear your opinion.”

     Li Yaolin said: “In fact, I always think that there are so many warehouses at Baoren Port Terminal. It would be a good idea for us to buy or rent one to make cultural and creative products.”

     Zheng Xuan: “…”

     She asked: “Have you had the idea of opening your own factory for a long time?”

     “Isn’t this just thought of! You also know that after this incident, everyone knows that my postcards are valuable, so there will definitely be people willing to pay a higher price to buy limited edition postcards!

     “The rest of the workers are unwilling to take risks for 800 yuan, so what if the price is raised to 8,000? They dare not transplant dozens of them, so selling one or two is enough to cover their wages for one or two months, right? And if there are one or two less, we don’t know, right?

     “So, it is unrealistic to wait for other factories to conduct self-examination and self-correction, and for workers to consciously resist temptation. It is better for us to open our own factory and turn the workers into our own people, so that we don’t have to worry about them doing similar things.”

     Zheng Xuan said: “But if we open a factory by ourselves, we need to invest more money, right?”

     “In the past, we didn’t open a factory by ourselves because the funds were indeed insufficient, and Xingzhou Island had just developed, and there was no stable supply and marketing relationship for cultural and creative products. Now it is different. Judging from the increasing sales of cultural and creative products, our cultural and creative products are still very mainstream and are quite popular and loved by people. With such a good prospect, we can definitely make it bigger and stronger…”

     Of course, Li Yaolin’s idea didn’t just come up with an idea. In fact, she had long known that someone in the factory had stolen her limited edition postcards and sold them to others. The smart housekeeper can monitor the public opinion about Xingzhou Island on the Internet, and naturally paid attention to some abnormalities in the data of the limited edition postcards.

     This investigation found the purchasing group, and reported the matter to the island owner very early. Li Yaolin could have directly approached Zheng Xuan and her boss to tell them about this when she found out about this, but in this case, it was inevitable that someone would question whether Zheng Xuan was not capable enough to continue to stay in her current position.

     Besides, it was not the project team led by Zheng Xuan who discovered this, but her boss, so the nature of the matter was different.

     Self-examination and self-correction still provided a chance to make amends, but if the island owner personally came forward, even if the island owner did not pursue the matter because Zheng Xuan was a roommate and a good sister, it would only leave people with a bad impression that she was a relative, had no ability, and relied on relationships to get to the top.

     Therefore, Li Yaolin asked the smart housekeeper to send the data of the decline in sales to the sales department, so that the sales department would pay a little attention to it, and then indirectly remind Zheng Xuan with the feedback of the lower postcard winning rate.

     If Zheng Xuan still could not detect the problem, she would not take the initiative to tell the truth about this matter, so as to avoid her good sister being hit by this matter.

     But she would find other reasons to put the matter of opening a factory on the agenda, and as for those postcards, if they were lost, they would be lost, just take it as a lesson for herself.

     Zheng Xuan didn’t know that the island owner had already made up her mind. She sighed and said, “It was my negligence. I underestimated the value of this postcard. You clearly told me so at the beginning…”

     Li Yaolin said, “Even the boss of their factory didn’t know about this. You were far away in Xingzhou Island. It was normal that you didn’t find out about this in time. You don’t have to take all the responsibility.”

     Zheng Xuan was still a little puzzled. She was the one who found the factory and discussed the production and cooperation. It was her fault that she didn’t find out the hidden dangers buried by the inadequate internal management of this factory.

     Li Yaolin said, “But this incident did cause some losses to Xingzhou Island. Why don’t you pay for the 50 blind boxes? A total of 1,500 yuan will be deducted from your bonus.”

     Zheng Xuan: “…”

     She felt much better after the fine.

     1,500 yuan sounds like a lot at first, but after she became a supervisor, her salary increased a lot, and this amount of money can be made up by working overtime for a month.

     Li Yaolin said: “This matter must be kept secret and cannot be publicized everywhere, otherwise there will be second accident.”

     “Are you worried?”

     “I asked to keep it low-key because I was worried that this matter would spread out. Tourists knew that the limited edition postcards could be replaced by an employee, and it would be difficult for them to believe in the probability of winning the limited edition postcards.”

     Zheng Xuan understood: “The original probability of issuing limited edition postcards was 1.66%. Buying 60 blind boxes would give you a chance to get one. If they are not rich and bought 120 blind boxes, but no limited edition postcards were issued, then they would have reason to suspect that we had tampered with them.”

     She asked again: “There is a question. Others have said that this limited edition postcard is so magical, why don’t I feel particularly lucky even though I carry it every day?”

     This time, I was unlucky and lost 1,500 yuan in bonuses.

     Li Yaolin was also confused and could only ask the little mermaid.

     The little mermaid said: “She is the employee of the island owner. After signing the contract, she has been blessed by the sea god, so this ‘Sea God Blessing Chapter’ will not work on her either!”

     Li Yaolin: “…”

     You should have told me this earlier!

     Little mermaid: “The island owner didn’t ask me!”

     “I didn’t ask you at first, and you reminded me!”

     “That’s because… you are the island owner, and I’m the island owner’s assistant!”

     Li Yaolin: “…”

     Brother Xuan is still your colleague, why are you so hypocritical.

     Li Yaolin stopped worrying about this and started thinking about building a factory.

     Of course, this factory cannot be built on Xingzhou Island, but if the site is outside the use right area of Xingzhou Island, it can only apply for operation and factory construction through normal channels.

     Although the purpose of building a factory cannot be completed through the system, taking Li Yaolin’s investment in Qianlai Tourism and becoming the actual controlling shareholder as an example, it is considered an asset under Li Yaolin’s name, and its revenue is also counted within the revenue range of the system.

     It does not require a large-scale factory to process and produce cultural and creative products. In addition to some products that cannot be replaced by machines, postcards can actually be mass-produced by machines. Even some scenic spot postcards are printed and produced by the store owners themselves. The process is not complicated.

     Li Yaolin considered opening a factory and recruiting 20 to 30 employees with experience in this area to process and produce cultural and creative products because there are other cultural and creative products to be produced on Xingzhou Island.

     She plans to open this small factory in the name of the company, which can save some approval procedures and processes. But since the design and production of cultural and creative products are under the management of the market operation department, the factory affairs will be handled by Manager Jiang.

     As for the reason for opening a factory, Li Yaolin said lightly: “Although most of the best factories in the field of processing cultural and creative products are in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, those places are too far away after all, and there are too few factories nearby with mature production processes that meet our conditions, so I have long wanted to do it myself, and I will take this opportunity to cancel the cooperation with the other party…”

     The party at fault this time is in that factory, so Xingzhou Island proposed not to continue the third cooperation with the other party, and the other party has no reason to ask for compensation.

     Manager Jiang said: “But in this case, the launch date of the third batch of blind boxes will have to be postponed.”

     “It’s fine to postpone it. We didn’t tell the public when the third batch of blind boxes would be launched. Before the factory is set up and the third batch of blind boxes is produced, we should focus on other cultural and creative products. The cultural and creative team should spend more time designing more cultural and creative products.”

     After the blind boxes are sold out, maybe people will talk about them even more?

 

……

 

     “The purchasing agent was arrested?” When Song Ruqing heard that she didn’t get the postcards she wanted and the purchasing agent was arrested, she was confused and worried, “Will we be okay?”

     If the police come to torture her, her acting career will be ruined!

     The assistant said with some guilt: “The other party is not selling any illegal/prohibited/goods, and we buyers will be fine. It’s just… our money may not be refunded.”

     “If a few hundred yuan can’t be refunded, it can’t be refunded.” Song Ruqing said irritably.

     How did the other party get arrested? Is there a traitor in the group? Otherwise, how could a few dozen limited edition postcards attract the attention of the police and cause them to arrest people?

     She was in a bad mood and met Sister Ying who came to the company to discuss something. When the assistant saw Sister Ying’s smug look, she also said with envy: “I heard that she went to Xingzhou Island with Zhou Qunfang on New Year’s Day to celebrate the New Year. She also won a limited edition postcard by taking advantage of Zhou Qunfang’s luck. After the stock market opened, the stocks she bought kept rising. In addition, there have been changes in the middle management of Lujiao Media recently. She is likely to be promoted, so this time she came to discuss cooperation with our company on behalf of Lujiao Media…”

     Song Ruqing was even more annoyed. She glared at the assistant who was not good at doing things but was more likely to cause trouble and had time to eat other people’s melons here. She even began to hesitate whether she should also bow to Zhou Qunfang to take advantage of her luck.

     After all, she still couldn’t let go of her own body, but she instigated an artist in the same company who was famous for speaking his mind to ask Zhou Qunfang and got an answer.

     Zhou Qunfang said: “Why don’t you go to Xingzhou Island by yourself? If you meet the island owner, wouldn’t it be better for you to go and take advantage of the island owner’s luck? If you can get a photo with her, you will be famous all over the Internet?”

     Song Ruqing thought: That’s right! Zhou Qunfang’s luck only improved after she went to Xingzhou Island.

     It just so happened that she didn’t have any announcements recently, so she went there to play for a day or two, just as a vacation.

     She asked her assistant to hold the phone and wait for a day until someone refunded the ticket, and the assistant grabbed the ticket without saying a word. Fortunately, the Internet speed was fast, so she grabbed it.

     “Sister Qing, do you want to stay overnight? Their hotel seems to be open.” The assistant asked.

     “Of course.”

     “Now the hotel only has luxury suites left. It happens to be Valentine’s Day and costs 2,880 yuan a night. This is not a company-arranged trip, so it may not be reimbursed. Do you still stay?”

     Song Ruqing: “…”

     She gritted her teeth: “Stay!”